Surfside EC4 Data Centre

Adding Life to Concrete – How MARKHAM applied hydrogel moisture control treatments to concrete slabs at a critical data centre facility in Eastern Creek, NSW.

CHALLENGE

The construction of data centres is accelerating sharply, driven by the surging demand for cloud services, artificial intelligence workloads and the ever‑expanding digital infrastructure that underpins modern life.

What does this mean? Speed‑to‑commissioning is everything. On major data centre projects, excess moisture within concrete slabs can become a critical constraint, delaying the installation of waterproofing membranes, coatings or flooring systems and creating programme risk during key construction phases.

At the Surfside EC4 data centre at Eastern Creek, NSW, the construction programme required a moisture control solution that would address these risks without introducing additional curing periods, recoating requirements or surface‑applied barriers that could slow progress.

SOLUTION

For the Surfside EC4 data centre at Eastern Creek, NSW, MARKHAM provided a hydrogel‑based moisture control treatment applied directly to the concrete slabs.

Instead of relying on topical coatings or surface‑applied moisture barriers, this approach addressed moisture within the concrete matrix itself. This removed the need for alternative methods that can introduce additional curing periods, surface preparation requirements or recoating stages.

The treatment could be applied while the concrete was still curing, allowing subsequent construction activities to proceed without unnecessary delay. By avoiding reliance on conventional topical systems, MARKHAM helped remove a potential programme constraint during a critical stage of the build.

RESULT

Construction scheduling for this critical phase of the Surfside EC4 project was optimised by addressing slab moisture directly within the concrete. This reduced the risk of delays commonly associated with moisture‑related assumptions during waterproofing and finishing stages.

Where construction programmes are constrained by slab moisture levels, MARKHAM’s moisture control approach can remove that hindrance, enabling waterproofing membranes, flooring systems or coatings to be installed earlier than would otherwise be possible.

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Data centre projects are delivered under uniquely compressed construction and commissioning programmes. For broader industry context on how these pressures shape modern data centre delivery, see resources from the Uptime Institute.